Links & Quotes

Hey, leaders, let me ask you a simple question: Is your workplace a safe place for people to make mistakes? It should be or else we will be limiting the potential of both our teammates and our whole organization. Greg and I unpack this in greater detail in this episode.

I have a lot of new video content on my YouTube channel every week. Please check it out and subscribe so you don’t miss anything.

“You yearn for a simplified lifestyle, so that your communication with Me can be uninterrupted. But I challenge you to relinquish the fantasy of an uncluttered world. Accept each day just as it comes, and find Me in the midst of it all. … Remember that your ultimate goal is not to control or fix everything around you; it is to keep communing with Me. A successful day is one in which you have stayed in touch with Me, even if many things remain undone at the end of the day. Do not let your to-do list (written or mental) become an idol directing your life. Instead, ask My Spirit to guide you moment by moment.” —Sarah Young, Jesus Calling [1 Thessalonians 5:17; Proverbs 3:6]

“God is God, and since He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in His will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.” —Elizabeth Elliot 

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” —Booker T. Washington 

As I have mentioned previously, T.M. Moore and I share the conviction that pastors are called by God to shepherd the sheep God has placed under their care. Moore writes, “Jesus indicated six disciplines that shepherds must master in leading His churches.” Check out this post where he outlines these six disciplines.

Pornography adversely effects the viewer’s brain, leading to a growing list of physical and emotional problems. Check out this post from Fight The New Drug, in which they report, “No matter what you believe about porn, ‘what is undeniable is that we’re consuming far more of it than at any point in human history, and the effects of this are yet to fully register.’”

I have always loved the fact of God’s laughter—the perfect joy He has must be expressed in perfect laughter! David Mathis writes about the encouragement in God’s laugh: “One way to enjoy the smile of our fiercely happy Father is to tune your ears to the wonders of His laughter.”

Scientists took a cubic millimeter of a mouse’s brain and mapped out the neurons and connections. The result is astounding! In Nature, they wrote, “A cubic millimetre might not sound like much—roughly the size of a grain of sand—but to neuroscientists, it is enormous. One cubic millimetre of a mammalian brain contains tens of thousands of neurons with hundreds of millions of connections, or synapses, between them.” Can you imagine what the human brain is like?! How amazing is our Creator! 

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” —G.K. Chesterton 

Links & Quotes

Jesus didn’t teach us to pray for a lengthy supply, but for a daily supply. This keeps us dependent on our heavenly Father day after day after day.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

As if you needed more encouragement to control stress in your life, researchers have now found that stress can disrupt your brain’s ability to form memories, which can trigger more anxiety. Here is a surprising way for you to relieve stress in your life.

“The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.” —Booker T. Washington 

T.M. Moore is in the midst of sharing an eye-opening series of posts on what eternal life truly is. Here is a short snippet: “In Ephesians 1:15-23 Paul provides insight to how we may engage heavenly realities throughout our earthly and temporal sojourn. As he prayed for the Ephesians, so, we can believe, he would have prayed for us as well. But what did he pray? First, that God would give us His Spirit for ‘wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him’ (v. 17). The Spirit, we know, works with the revelation of God in Scripture to make us more like our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:12-18). He uses the entire Bible to help us increase in our experience of eternal life. This is true for knowing more of our great salvation as well as for glimpsing more of our eternal life.”

“Comparison sabotages two relationships at the same time: your relationship with God, and your relationship with other people. You can’t fully love others when you’re jealous of them or trying to outperform them. And you can’t love God when you think maybe God has given you a bad deal.” —Practicing Gratitude reading plan on YouVersion 

Recent studies have shown a connection between rising boredom rates and increasing digital media usage. The Axis Culture Translator reported, “Most of us (including our teens) reach for a digital device when we feel boredom creeping in. We might logically assume that the near-constant stimulation we receive from our devices would reduce our experience of boredom—but the truth might be the opposite. Analysis and discussion based on ten years’ worth of data suggests that while boredom might drive us towards digital media, it isn’t actually satisfied by it. Many users find themselves in a loop where the perceived solution to restlessness and boredom actually amplifies those uncomfortable feelings. In other words, the ‘thirst’ of boredom leads us to the ‘water’ of digital media, but the water is salty.”

Links & Quotes

Don’t wait until you feel like doing the next good thing, just do the next good thing and the good feelings will follow. Not only that, but you will motivate others too!

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” —Booker T. Washington

This is a cool mini-biography of Gottfried von Leibniz, a German polymath, committed Lutheran, and one of the most wide-ranging intellects in all of history.

“Forgiveness does not excuse the offending behavior. Forgiveness excuses the offender. The fact that God forgives us of sin, does not make sinning okay. The fact that we forgive someone of their sin towards us, does not make the sin okay.” —Kanayo Situ

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.” —Alfred Lord Tennyson

“In life you can take things one of two ways: you can take them for granted or you can take them with gratitude.” —G.K. Chesterton

T.M. Moore has an excellent post on how we can prepare for temptation before it even comes. Please check out this whole post which concludes with this thought, “Make up your mind, each day, that you’re going to resist temptation with prayer, preparation, and resting in the Word of God. Let the Spirit Who brings conviction and repentance be at work within you before you come upon the nets and snares of temptation, and you’ll be in a much better position to overcome the evil that threatens to engulf you, with the good choices and conduct that please the Lord and honor Him.”

More amazing evidence of the creativity of our Creator. Researchers have discovered how plant roots adapt based on the presence or lack of water.

Links & Quotes

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Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.” ―C.S. Lewis

“True faith embraces Christ in whatever ways the Scriptures hold Him out to poor sinners.” —Jonathan Edwards

Going through difficult times might be beneficial for Christians, says Trevin Wax in his post How Social Ostracism Could Increase Our Love.

“Yet while a race remembers and relives its sufferings and wrongs, it is often unwittingly transformed, often into the very image of its oppressor. Moreover, bitterness anchors the mind in the past and takes the heart with it. There is no future and no sense of the possible. There is only the incessant churning. Soon it becomes an excuse, a room into which the heart can run to find justification for failure and wrongs of its own. The end comes after the isolation and the rage have run their course. Bitterness is the second sting of the wound, and its fruit is death.” ―Booker T. Washington

“Progress is impossible if you only attempt to do the things you have always done.” —Mike Krzyzewski

[VIDEO] Is there evidence for a literal Adam and Eve? Does it matter?